Page 3994 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 15 Sept 2009
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“I’m not guilty. Mr Stanhope might be, but not me, I’m not going to take any responsibility for this.” But let us face it: Rhodium was a creation of the Stanhope government. All the issues relating to Rhodium are at the feet of this government—that is, all of the issues about poor senior management, poor management practices, poor credit control, poor IT systems. Let us put it quite simply: Rhodium was not a success, but it was certainly a creature of this government. It has been the subject of a very critical report from the Auditor-General. It is a report that the government sought to walk away from, even though it was the unanimous report of the public accounts committee, with Dr Foskey representing the Greens, Ms MacDonald representing the Labor Party and me. It was a unanimous report. There was no dissent. In fact, there was no way you could dissent from it. We only have to go to what the auditor said in that report to see that. I quote from page 3 of the report:
In Rhodium’s case, it seems evident that the lack of clear strategic direction from the Shareholders created uncertainty and made it difficult for Rhodium to provide and commit to appropriate long-term strategic planning to achieve its business objectives.
The shareholders had a role, as they do in each of these corporations. They have powers under the act to give directions, yet we find that nothing was done by the Chief Minister and the treasurers of the time to make it work.
On page 25 of the report under “Key findings”, we hear:
Rhodium has been facing uncertainty since its establishment due to a lack of clear strategic direction from the Shareholders.
Right from the outset, the Auditor found:
Rhodium has been facing uncertainty since its establishment due to a lack of clear strategic direction from the Shareholders.
This is Rhodium as a consequence of Mr Stanhope’s lack of action as a shareholder. The report goes on:
Consequently, it was difficult for Rhodium to provide and commit to appropriate long-term strategic planning to achieve its business objectives and maximise the returns to the Shareholders.
Why? Because the shareholders did not do their job. The problem in this case is that the shareholders were the Chief Minister and Treasurer from the Labor government. The report goes on to say that that the uncertainty of Rhodium’s future and a lack of clear direction from the shareholders made it difficult for the board to commit. So the problem is we have a government that did not take seriously the things that Mr Doszpot has pointed out in this motion when we talk about the management of statutory authorities and territory-owned corporations. The management responsibilities by the shareholders are clear. There is a key finding on page 32 of the Rhodium report. Paragraph 3.42 concludes:
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